Prince Philip's road mishap begs the question: At what age to stop driving?

Prince Philip, 97, was involved in a car accident outside London

Prince Philip, the 97-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, overturned his Land Rover on Thursday in a car crash on a rural road north of London. He was unhurt; two women in an oncoming minivan suffered scrapes and a broken wrist.

It’s not known exactly what happened or who was at fault. The prince told police officers at the scene that he was momentarily blinded by the sun while pulling onto a main thoroughfare.

The incident has prompted some reflection in Britain about when an aging driver ought to consider surrendering the car keys. Sound familiar? The question has long tormented families everywhere.

Over the years, reporters at The Times have written extensively about the thorny issues involved. Here are a few articles about a controversy that won’t be going away anytime soon.

The car key conversation

Now I learn that the “car key conversation” is the one that caregivers dread most. Thirty-six per cent of adult children polled by the website caring.com and the National Safety Council said that talking to their parents about the need to stop driving would be harder than discussing funeral plans (29 per cent) or selling the family home (18 per cent).

Should doctors stop patients from driving?

Alas, among the takeaways of the guidebook are the great difficulties physicians have at this fraught moment, and how much easier it would be for them if the decision did not involve them. As it is, physicians must wrestle with laws that vary by state on a variety of issues: if and how elderly drivers are assessed differently than younger ones; whether it is mandatory or optional for doctors to report their concerns; how they are supposed to go about it and strike the right balance between confidentiality and safety; and whether they risk legal liability if, on the one hand, they alert the state authorities or, on the other hand, they keep silent and a subsequent accident occurs.

Elderly drivers fail a test

True or false? Most older drivers drive as safely as anyone else. It’s just that a few bad apples, particularly those behind the wheel despite poor vision or dementia, produce the statistics showing that per mile driven, drivers over age 75 are almost as dangerous as teenagers.

I want this to be true, given how dependent Americans of all ages are on automobiles. But researchers in Australia, using a novel method to gauge how well people drive, have concluded that serious errors are alarmingly commonplace. “We are seeing a ubiquitous increase in driver errors with age,” said Kaarin Anstey, a psychologist at Australian National University and lead author of the report, just published in the journal Neuropsychology.